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Gay Health News: A quarter of people living with HIV in the UK are unaware they are infected
By: Nigel Robinson
Early diagnosis essential, says HSA
Early diagnosis essential, says HSA
A quarter of people with HIV don't know they are infected.
26 November 2010
The Health Protection Agency’s (HPA) annual report on HIV in the UK estimates that out of the 86,500 people living with HIV, 22,000 are unaware they are carrying the virus.
Doctor Valerie Delpech of the HPA said: “We’re very concerned that a large number of people in the UK are unaware of their HIV status, and that half of all newly-diagnosed people are diagnosed late, meaning they may not benefit from very effective treatments.”
Responding to the report, Sir Nick Partridge of the Terrence Higgins Trust stressed the importance of targeting HIV prevention and awareness programmes amongst gay men.
“We also need to redouble work to get people to test, to reduce the high numbers of people who don’t know that they have HIV for far too long before being tested and prevent needless deaths,” he said.
Last year, a total of 6,630 people were newly-diagnosed as HIV-positive, of which 2,760 (42%) were among men who have sex with men (MSM).
One in six of them had contracted the virus within the 4-5 months before diagnosis, and four out of five had probably become infected within the UK.
Among the 65,000 people accessing HIV care last year one in five was aged fifty or over.
Half of all adults were diagnosed at a late stage of infection, with CD4 counts less than 350, which is the stage at which treatment is recommended to begin.
The rate of deaths amongst HIV-infected people has remained stable for the past decade, and the number of AIDS diagnoses has continued to decline.
However in 2009, a total of 516 people with HIV were reported to have died.
Of these, 73% had been diagnosed late, thereby underlining the importance of being tested earlier for HIV.
